Warning for people buying electronics in South Africa

South Africa’s electrical and electronic goods market is awash with products that are fake, counterfeit, and don’t comply with local safety standards and other regulations.

Aside from non-compliant and illegal consumer electronics, CBI-electric engineering executive Andrew Dickson revealed last year that South Africa was seeing an influx of counterfeit electrical goods from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

These include knock-off circuit breakers, light switches, and other common electrical items people install in their homes.

“Someone will take an existing product and go to somewhere like China and ask them to create a replica,” said Dickson.

“They will take the product and copy it, making it look like yours and bring it back into the market.”

Dickson explained that because many of these businesses producing counterfeit goods already have a presence in the market, their knock-offs are assumed to be legitimate.

Due to the variety of products, it is tough to detect a shipment of counterfeit goods at customs as it requires specialist knowledge to identify what is legitimate and what is not.

“They either stop everything, which hurts the legitimate manufacturers, or they don’t stop anything, flooding the market with counterfeit goods,” said Dickson.

Although the products are most commonly sold in the informal sector, Dickson said they are making their way into smaller hardware stores.

“For the most part, the trusted brands should be in line with the South African National Standards (SANS),” Dickson says.

“As a manufacturer myself, we are brought to book by the retailer if we do not have our paperwork in place.”

He added that where the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) may have previously been able to inform buyers whether a product is legitimate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to detect counterfeits.

Another area where South Africa faces a deluge of fake and non-compliant equipment is wireless devices.

One prominent example that emerged last year is online merchants selling products with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transceivers that don’t have the necessary licences and approvals on platforms like Temu.

Products with wireless radios require approval from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa).

These platforms also let shoppers buy electrical devices with batteries, or that connect to mains electricity, without the necessary clearance from the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS).

These regulatory requirements exist to ensure devices can safely be connected to the electrical grid and don’t interfere with local wireless networks.

Customs officers are responsible for checking for NRCS certificates

Local distributors and importers have often complained that the processes to apply for regulatory clearance are onerous.

Sellers who export their goods to South Africa without the necessary approvals enjoy a substantial and unlawful advantage over those who follow the rules.

Another issue was the continued proliferation of routers falsely claiming to support 5G connectivity.

Many prominent e-commerce platforms in South Africa had dozens of routers with “5G” or “4G/5G” in their titles. Many of these products were portable or so-called Mi-Fi routers.

Two unfamiliar brands that frequently surfaced in the listings were “Set Out” and “Bvot.”

These products initially appeared to be great bargains for well below R1,000, considering 5G routers were typically priced over R2,000 from reputable Internet service providers and mobile networks.

However, a closer inspection of the product descriptions revealed that all of the routers only supported 4G connectivity.

We initially suspected the sellers might be getting away with using “5G” in the names of their products because the routers at least supported 5GHz Wi-Fi. However, they didn’t even support that.

Not only are buyers not getting 5G mobile connectivity, they are also receiving outdated Wi-Fi tech.

Dickson said that nothing of quality is cheap and that if a product’s price “is too good to be true, it probably is.”

Although he was specifically referring to counterfeit electrical components, his advice resonates when it comes to fake and uncertified consumer electronics devices too.